What is it?

This site was originally set up in order to compile a public domain
database of postcode locations whilst people look at our old maps.
Nowadays, there is a better, more complete set of data in the
form of
OS OpenData
so there is less need of separate collection efforts. As a result, the
postcode collection parts of this site have now been disabled, but you can
still use it to browse some lovely old maps of the British Isles.

Some of the later parts of this FAQ still refers to the data sets which
can be still be downloaded if not updated.

What licence does the data have?

The data will be will be in the public domain; consequently, users
submitting data agreed to their submission being in the public domain
when they entered their postcode.

What maps are you using?

So can I do what I like with your scans/tiles?

No. The scans and tiles have been placed under a
licence; they are not in the public
domain.

Okay; I can use the tiles for some things; can I download the complete set?

We have all the tiles available in a couple of different naming schemes, but
not all of them are on machines with suitable internet connections for
downloading from.

If you drop us an email letting us know which
areas you are interested in (ideally either sheet numbers, or the whole lot),
and confirm that your use falls within the tile
licence, we can work out the best way to let you get the tiles. It may
even be possible for us to post you a dvd of the tiles, but we'll normally
request a donation to OpenStreetMap
in-leui of the postage.

One thing we do ask is that if you want to use the tiles; please don't
try and crawl our tileserver to obtain the entire set.
Let us know what you're after, and we can
probably sort something out!

It'd be really great if I could get a world file / .jpw / etc
for the tiles I'm looking at, so I can feed it to gdal / mapserv / etc

It's very easy to turn a tile's URL into the location of any of its
corners. We have a script that will happily spit out .jpw world files for
any of our tiles, which various people make use of.

Let us know if you're interested, and we
can either send you a bunch of world files, or the magic perl script.

Isn't orthowotsiting an old map hard?

Luckily we're going to work in the OSGB coordinate system that
matches up with the grid lines on the map; this means we don't have to
distort the maps too much. We also are not overly fussy about the
accuracy, so this step can be done quickly.

Because they are licensed under Creative Commons Share-alike
licences, so we wouldn't be able to make the postcode data public domain.

There are people who believe that locating a point on a map creates a
derived work, and hence requires a licence. We don't want to be the first
to prove them wrong in a court, as that will be pricy.

If you are using scans of old maps, how accurate will the locations
be?

Some of the scans are out by a degree or two but they are fairly
good. We hope to be able to get better than 100 metres accuracy out of it in
the end. This is more than good enough to locate a region as large as
the first half of a postcode, and hopefully as much as the 'partial'
postcodes described in the answer to 'What is it?' above.

How do I view maps from different decades?

For many areas, we have maps from a number of different years. By default,
we always show you the most recent map we have. That gives you the best
chance to locate postcodes, and allows us to produce the best list
of free postcodes that we can.

However, we do understand that sometimes people would like to be able
to compare how things have changed. For that reason, we provide a second
interface to view our maps. With this one, we allow you to browse all
of our maps from each decade.

You can browse by decade by going here.
(We currently have maps from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s).
Please note that we do not have maps for all areas for all decades, so
you may find that you can only view a given place at only one or two
dates.

If you have maps for an area for a decade that we currently don't,
please do contact us.

Is the code behind the site available?

The code is all under an open, MIT like license, see
here
for details.

Here's another source of free postcodes

NEW: Don't worry, so do we. The OS has released some data for free - though it's not public domain, it should be free enough for most people's uses.

There are many unattributed postcodes sets on the web, but none others
(apart from freethepostcode.org, which we are already working with) which
are unambiguously free. In particular there is a site which lots of people have pointed at. Unfortunately
there is no actual data there; the data was removed after the Post Office
issued a take-down notice to this site. We're only interested in public
domain database (or possibly databases with other unambiguously "free"
licensing terms).

The map doesn't join up.

Yes, it isn't perfect. The OS didn't publish a single map of the whole
country, so you have to scan then stick together data from several maps.
We don't really know how to correct it perfectly. It would be really cool
if someone could write software to detect the gridlines and automatically
cut the images up on the lines and make them square.

The wonkiness is so annoying it drives me mad, and I have experience of orthrectifying maps. Please let me straighten your maps.

Cool. Contact us, that would be great.

Why didn't you use proj/gdal?

Because we don't know how to work them. If you feel like improving how this
works, let us know. Update: We do use proj for the postcode display.

Why did it take you so long to have coverage of Scotland?

While the Ordnance Survey did create the New Popular Edition maps of
Scotland at 1 inch to the mile, these were never published, so we can't
buy them to scan in. Scotland was included in the Ordnance Survey
7th Edition at 1 inch to the mile, but almost all of these
maps remain in copyright for another few years, so we can't put them
online yet

The Ordnance Survey did release some updates to the Popular Edition
of Scotland in the 1940s, which had the National Grid over-printed on.
them. (The War Office also published similar versions). While the grid
isn't parallel with the main map, it is possible to work with (just a
little bit more work). It has taken us much longer to track these down
than it took us to get the England and Wales New Popular Edition maps.
This is why we have only recently been able to offer a high degree of
coverage for Scotland.

We now think we have completed our coverage of Scotland. Most of the
maps used are from the 1940s, but there are small numbers of earlier maps
(mostly 1920s), and small numbers of 7th edition maps from the
1950s. To see the coverage we have, visit the
large overview map.

Why don't you have mapping data of Northern Ireland?

For Northern Ireland, the situation is harder than for Scotland,
because the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland didn't produce an
equivalent to the New Popular Edition, instead it produced a number of
updates without altering the name of the edition. So, many of the maps
from the Popular Edition of Northern Ireland are still in Copyright, so
it's hard to know if a given old map is out of copyright just from the
name.

Compounding this, it is much harder to track down second hand maps
of Northern Ireland, compared to the difficulty of getting English,
Welsh and Scottish maps of the period. We have also yet to come across
any institutional holdings of old Northern Irish maps where the
holder will allow scans to be made. All we have been able to get is
quarter inch to the mile maps, which don't fit into our tiling scheme,
and are too small for finding postcodes on.

If you would like to be notified when we do get out of copyright 1 inch
to the mile maps of Northern Ireland, please
register your interest.

Who did the work?

Richard Fairhurst acquired and scanned the maps of England and Wales,

Nick Burch, Andrew Rowbottom and Mike Calder have aquired and scanned
many of the maps of Scotland,